ugg...

i feel poopy. like a big pile of poop. sickness is no fun at all and i am definitely not good for much. not good for doing the dishes or the pile of impatient laundry. not good for painting either. i tend to make silly decisions when i'm sick so i'm only permitting myself to look at the canvas and that's it. if i touch it, i'll mess it up. i know from past experience. but at least i got out of my pajamas today and put on a dress. i was hoping that taking some time to put myself together would result in feeling better but no; i'm just a sad, runny-nosed, mouth-breathing girl in a dress. blah.

what 'work' looks like on a sick-day...

sniffling my way through two volumes of kiki smith's work, vitamin D, and (of course), my girlicous collection of poetry.
eating oranges.
too much coffee.
sitting against the wall, looking at the painting... really looking, and making a list of all the shit that just ain't working.
tons of mental notes which my snot-clogged brain definitely won't hold on to. crocheting, off and on, all day and all evening and most likely all night.
re-reading old diaries and pulling out golden little lines of disturbed, enjambed, romantic fascinations.
checking and re-checking the contents of the refrigerator, hoping something wonderful has appeared.

a bit spooked...

in spite of trying to keep my distance from my sweetie for the past couple days, i ended up catching his cold anyway, my efforts thwarted by the much needed good-night kiss. today, i woke up with a head full of snot. that, paired with yet another grey, dismal day, means i'm staying in my footie pajamas and taking it easy. maybe all my late nights in the studio and celebrations of the past week or so have caught up with me too. no more clos du bois for this girl.

i also made the very sad realization today that the art-world has been hit pretty hard by the recession we find ourselves in. lots of galleries closing their doors, guys. LOTS. and word on the street is that a whole slew more are planning on not renewing their leases. i'll admit i'm a bit scared... not necessarily for myself but for the community at large. as it is (and has been for as long as i can remember), art programs are always the thing that gets cut first in hard economic times (or not). even in a healthy economy, art appreciation and funding is tragically low. i'm nervous about what might be in store for art and artists now. it makes me sad. really, really sad. i can't imagine living a life not dominated by art - in all it's forms. without painting and poetry and music and design... what a dismal existence that would be! i can't even comprehend it! all i know is that until we ride this hard, daunting wave to the end, i'll be throwing EVERY SINGLE EXTRA DOLLAR at the emerging artists i love. every single red pathetic cent. it's important to me that artists continue to do their work and not let money get in the way of what they're trying to accomplish.

but the silver-lining... hopefully... is that maybe we'll begin to see a certain little cliche take hold: necessity is the mother of invention. maybe artists everywhere will really turn it up a notch and start coming up with some really thoughtful and innovative ideas and uses for common materials... myself included. this is definitely a situation where the most dedicated will rise to the top... or at least weather the storm.

speaking for myself solely - i will always make art. there will never come a day that i don't do this. the day i die is the day i don't pick up my brush. but knowing the frailty of the artist ego, i'm saddened by the prospect of others becoming so discouraged that they give up. please don't give up, guys. go underground for a bit and recuperate but keep going. please. if i could, i'd buy art from everybody. i'd be the world's biggest philanthropist and art patron. but i can't.

all this to say, i'll be lowering my prices a bit this week while i continue to re-curate the items i stock. it'll take a few days but by week's end i'll have some sale prices up at the shop. it's important to take an honest look at what the world's financial situation is at present and respond accordingly. it's important for me to offer affordable art and "affordability" is relative to the the times. i'm trying to take note of that fact and respond ethically to it. i've never thought that art is solely for the wealthy. i grew up very, very poor. painfully so. and it was art that was the biggest, brightest, most cherished thing i had in my life. i think artists have a duty to remember things like that, to think of the hardships others are facing, and to try to be a comfort.

hooked...

in spite of waking up at an early hour, i am already planning another all-nighter. coffee brewing and brain stewing, i am only in the mood to keep moving, keep working, go farther. i've spent the last few hours (and few days) crocheting. the banner project i started a year ago seems fitting again somehow and i'm happy to pick it back up. maybe it's the cleaning/sorting/weeding project in my home, the need to make my outside more closely resemble my inside, that has led me back to making banners... maybe being trapped inside by the rain makes me more introspective... whatever the reason, i am definitely not arguing with it. it was and is one of my most beloved projects. besides, it's a great way to come up with new ideas and just let my mind skip around while i wait for the big paintings to dry. text based work has always been one of my great loves anyhow: an excuse to look for poetry! and you know what a sappy, romantic glutton i am for that stuff! TOTAL poetry nerd! the rain most likely IS responsible for my plath/sexton obsession of the past few days, however. i've been taking the poems in like good medicine - a dose every few hours when i need to stretch my fingers away from the crochet hook. it works wonders.

order of the day...

redacted book page
angela simione, 2008

this labor...

3 hours of painting... time for a break... clear my eyes.

i look at the paintings on my walls and they are good: they look back.
they say, "keep going! make more!"

i am trying, girls. trying hard
to birth your sisters...
moving slowly,
keeping the strain at bay...
i am trying hard the push them out...

oscar, smoscar...

...me and my sweetie met a few friends at the bar instead. i haven't seen any of the new movies and, at this point, i don't know who half the celebrities even are. so after a few gin and tonics, we came home and i've been all over the internet leaving comments on other people's blogs. hehe. probably not the best idea but definitely fun and will hopefully put a smile on a few faces out there. cheers.

night...

the rain is here. and tonight i don't mind. sweet somehow, even to me, a native Californian. curled up in the wedding-knot quilt my mother gave me (even though i am not married. "close enough", she teased and handed it to me rather than the Goodwill), i'm letting myself and the paintings rest. the television is off, black and silent, and i am bouncing back and forth, anxious as an anthill, between the poetry books i keep at the ready:

Live or Die - Anne Sexton
Ariel - Sylvia Plath
Cruelty/Killing Floor - Ai

the storm signals its return.

simply...

an overcast day... no pictures to take. instead: crocheting in bed with chardonnay (fancy pants!) and Bauhaus' In The Flat Field filling my ears and heart. romantic and warm in spite of the grey.

screwball...

i stayed up til 6 am last night, er, morning. DANG! HAHAHAHAHA! i got a lot of work done but i also got a lot of sleeping done after that. my night-owling is getting out of hand. just a tad. i guess it's alright every now and then, i just hate missing my opportunity for daylight during the winter months. and we had another gorgeous day today too. me and inga hiked for 2 hours this afternoon. it was wonderful. it felt so good to just be out, by myself, in a wide open, silent place... i didn't wanna leave. but inevitably, my stomach started grumbling so i came home. anyway, seeing as how my sleep schedule is totally screwball at this point, it's safe to say that i'll be in the studio all night tonight as well. but i've got to force myself out of bed early tomorrow. i've got a ton of pictures i need to take and i want to cash in on the sunshine while i can. another big ol' storm is headed our way and will definitely be here by the end of the weekend. tomorrow is my last chance to get some of my long put off documentation done. no ifs, ands, or buts.

things to love at 3 in the morning...

the silence of a sleeping household
adult footie pajamas
a snugly, sweet rottweiler
coffee with sugar and cream (even though you know you shouldn't because it's 3am and drinking yet another mug full is definitely self-sabotage)
the smell of oil paint
the feeling of making progress
day-dreaming, er, night-dreaming, umm... the dreaming one does while one is awake
an empty kitchen sink
making paper dolls
making a snack
catching a second wind
the absent sounds of traffic
secret projects
feeling free

today...

finally, a day with out rain. ahhhhh. beautiful! the sun was bright and it wasn't as cold as it has been for the past week or so, so it was a great day to go hiking with the dog. inga is currently sleeping at my feet under the desk, worn out from our romp. :)

i did a little overhaul to the shop today. i figure it's definitely worth giving it the best possible shot at success i can, and making it look it's best is the best place to start. i'm currently re-curating it and will start scaling back on what i offer during the next few weeks. i'd rather present a small, sparkling collection of work than bombard people with paintings that don't necessarily fit with one another. besides, i'm not really a "something for everyone" kind of painter to begin with and i'd do well to remember that. all this to say, things will soon be disappearing from the shop. but not to worry! i'm working every single day and will build up a big, beautiful inventory of available artwork soon. keep an eye out.

between the galleries and the shop, i am one busy girl. but i like being a busy girl and feel lucky i've got so many venues to expose my work with. it's all about getting it out in to the world and giving your little babies the chance to find new homes of their own. that's where art really works its magic: touching the lives of others. and at the end of the day, that's exactly what i'm trying to do. i plan on staying up late again and losing myself in the oils. i've already put the coffee on.

anonymous landscape 2

finally got around to finishing this little gem...


11" x 14"
oil on canvas
2009

available at little black fences

proof... (in progress...)

i haven't posted a picture of work in what feels like an extremely long time. i talk and talk and talk about painting but where's the work, right? walk the talk, art jerk! here you go...


(untitled for now because i think it needs more work maybe, possibly, probably)
15" x 11"
graphite, erasure, and acrylic on paper
2009

back on the anonymity trip (as if i ever got off) and am very happy with the results. i'm definitely going to keep working on this one and do a few more drawings like this in order to experiment further with redaction techniques. i bought a roll of black duck tape today to see how that would read rather than the painted stripe across the eyes... plus, duck tape connotes violence and that's pretty much what i'm trying to get at: forced anonymity, robbed identities, stolen lives, victimization, murder... bad stuff.

small observation...

being the total art-snob that i am, i've been intrigued by a certain strange phenomenon for the past year or so... poets (majority? maybe?) like bad art. weird, huh? of course i'm basing this almost completely on the art they choose to put on the cover of their publications (magazines, chapbooks, full-length manuscripts) and i'm only talking about living poets. most of the poetry publications i read are from small, independent presses where the poet would definitely have a say in what goes on the cover of their work... and i'm amazed by what gets chosen. i know i sound like a puffed up, pompous, art freak but it's actually so strange to me that i had to comment on it. i mean, poetry is art. do poet's only study their particular art form and not anyone else's? i mean, at the end of the day, a person likes what they like and that's sort of all there is to the story. art is preference. but what i liked when i was 15 definitely wasn't what i was in to when i was 25. and especially not after actually sitting my ass down at a school desk and learning art's history and the problems art contends with today. all this to say, our tastes evolve... we become more discerning, more concerned with quality and abstract notions like integrity, honesty, humility. the stuff that gets chosen to sit on the cover of poetry books is the first thing i see as a reader. that image is meant to convey something about the contents of the book itself. but if i trusted that, there's a lot of really great writing i would've missed out on. most of the art that gets picked is safe, not memorable... basically, the kind of art one would see hanging over the bed in a motel 6. that can't possibly be the parallel a poet would what to draw to their own work! so the art-snob sticks her head out and makes a plea... get good work for your covers!!!! if you are writing contemporary poetry, pair it with some contemporary art. and 'contemporary' means much, much more than just being alive right now.

and now i'll put the art-snob back in her box.

ethical dilemma:

one of the blogs i've been reading for the past year and half did something the other day that is more than just a little bit shady. the person who runs it basically presented the work of another poet (dead, super duper famous, and one of my personal influences) as their own. at first i thought, "probably was in a hurry and forgot to give credit where credit is due. no biggie. i'm sure they'll catch it." well, this particular post has gotten a bunch of comments at this point complimenting this poem and what a great writer this blogger is. no one has caught that this isn't their work and the blogger hasn't fessed up to the fact that it's someone else's work... (tremendous sigh of disappointment).

i'm not going to leave a comment on this person's blog calling them out on this infraction even though i think it's more than deserved. reason being is that i've been plagiarized before and confronting the offender about it doesn't result in much good other than getting them to stop ripping you off (or in this case, ripping off this particular poet). they'll just rip someone else off. the cycle just continues and continues.

people who plagiarize have succumbed to their very large feeling of inadequacy and are pretty much just acting out of fear. pointing this out doesn't make them feel bad, it makes them feel embarrassed... and embarrassed to the point of hatred. and there's no low they won't stoop to to get you back for publicly shaming them. i mean, come on - they're plagiarists. it's not like ethics really matter to these people. and i don't want to get in one of those weirdo internet battles with anybody. this person knows who they are and should be ashamed. if it was an accident, fix it, apologize, and be more aware of siting your sources in the future. but from where i sit, ripping off another artist's work and presenting it as your own is so amazingly WRONG that i can't even wrap my mind around it. and ripping off the work of a dead woman, no less! for shame, for shame, for shame!

i'll follow your blog a while longer just to see if you amend this. if not, you've lost this reader for good.

quick note...

whoo! long night last night! i got a few hours of sleep and then hopped right back on the art train. it feels good. it really, really does. after all these past months of wrestling with the same two problematic oil paintings, hitting a new stride is more than welcome.

also, when i woke up i found out that my painting untitled (protect) had been featured on the front page of MyArtSpace (feather in my cap!) which was wonderful because it's one of my favorites. it's nice when someone points out the painting that you feel closest to...


untitled (protect)
24" x 17.5"
oil on canvas
2008

lovely...

it's 6:30 in the morning... still dark outside, still raining. but the sky is trying to fall away from prussian and reach for periwinkle. i've been up all night painting. lucky girl.

i love it when this happens and i love it that i'm able to cater to the work this way... to forget about clocks and schedules and just follow the concept, follow the aesthetic, follow my love for this. it's definitely worth being tired later. besides, i've got tons of coffee at the ready anyhow.

the shock of all the wonderful things that have happened since the start of this year (and even just since quitting my job) has been hugely inspiring. i'm excited about everything and don't mind the struggle. i've cleared out the house, made a ton of extra space and, tonight/today, have spread out my canvasses and paper and just decided to be brave. i realized i had somehow reverted back to that horrible place of feeling precious about the work... afraid of fucking up. not good and i know better than that. no risk = no exploration, no breakthrough, no surprise, no poetry. but tonight, gladly and finally, i got myself out of that viciousness.

sometimes the night is just too short. as soon as the sun peeks out from behind our tall forest, i'll feel tired. i'll pull the curtains closed and go back to ignoring the clock a while longer, revel in this wonderful, freeing silence and push around my oil. i don't know when my sweetheart will be waking up but i think i'll go ahead and put some coffee on for myself and some music too. beck's 'seachange' maybe. i feel nostalgic for the world, full of sweet fantasies and memories and still quite eager for my paint.

these rainy days...

mahogany glitter
black ink... dripped, splattered, and spilled
off-white wool... especially in the form of a big, chunky sweater
Payne's grey
ivory black
ivory white
(a touch of vermilion every now and then)
exploration and the mess it brings
patti smith
anne sexton
henry rollins
black and white animals... polar bears, ostriches, magpies... :)
wind-filled skirts and dresses
long, unruly hair
ripped up sneakers
patent leather mary janes
white walls
wooden floors
rain on the roof (for the past 6 days straight)
day dreaming
night-owling
hazelnut coffee
my sweetheart sleeping next to me

art and stuff...

the last three days have been so friggin' wonderful i hardly know where to start! first, i dropped off two big gulp paintings at SF Studio the other day and Jen (the owner) was so thrilled to have them for next months show. she is such a sweetheart and such a funny, welcoming woman that i feel honored to have been invited to show at her gallery again. and the new space she moved the gallery to is beautiful! congratulations, jen!

after that, i swung by HANG to see Freya Prowe's solo show Blackwater (i missed the opening on first thursday because i was under the weather). she offers us beautiful, haunting work, completely rendered with a black and white and grey palette (squeal!), and influenced by old german folk lore and fairy tales. stunning work and i was so bummed i missed the opening reception! congratulations on an awesome show, Freya! here's one of my favorite works in the exhibition, the title piece of the show:


Blackwater
35" x 35"
oil and ink on zinc
Freya Prowe, 2009
photo courtesy of HANG Art Gallery

if i had the cash, i'd buy every piece in the exhibition. i've always been a huge admirer of Freya's work and she is such a warm, kind person in addition to being a wonderful artist.

also, i'm toying with the idea of closing my Etsy shop... i'm starting to think that it might not be the right fit for my work after all? i'll think about it awhile longer but, at this point, it just doesn't seem like a good idea and could possibly be detracting from the galleries i'm involved with. at very least, i'll wait to close the shop until the listings expire in a few weeks but after that, i'll just be a shopper at Etsy. i love the site and i've found so many great artists through my involvement with Etsy and i'll continue to support the site by buying other people's work. we'll see... i like leaving the door open to the possibility of having a change of heart but i'm just really starting to think that i need to give my complete attention to my galleries.

ahhhhh!

no big, long important post today friends: too much champagne with my buddy julie! more on that later; for now, all is wonderfully well and i'll let ya'll in on the secret soon. but trust it's a good one... a lot of good has been coming in to my life lately that i've got to keep my big, fat mouth shut about but, i promise, the secrecy is worth it and i so look forward to making the news public. close friends... shhhh! it's my news, bitches! shut up! and you know who you are!!!!!

today there is...

no television. no television but plenty of words. today is rottweiler black.

black ink, black dresses, black hair.
drawing faceless little girls while i wait on the laundry,
two pots of coffee,
a grapefruit and an orange.
Bauhaus in bed.

today i think of my brother, alone
in the South. my sister getting another new tattoo-
roses for the grimaced,
reminding us of our mother.

we all have the same eyes.


-angela simione, 2009

ahhh...

still knee deep in my cleaning/weeding/sorting/discerning/discarding extravaganza but i'm sufficiently stocked up on coffee and managing to hold on to the initial inspiration that jump started this whirlwind of change and renewal.

today i took it a bit easier than i had the last few days and made time for painting and drawing. i finished another big gulp painting and will be taking two of those little sweeties to jen at SF Studio tomorrow afternoon for the march exhibition "Delicious". i'm so thrilled that people like those funny little paintings! yay!

and i started a sketch book - something i have tried and failed at many a time. this time around, it isn't just for quick sketches, notes, and doodles. i'm taping in old postcards from art shows i saw and admired, bits of poetry, scraps torn out of newspapers and magazines, and some real honest to goodness painting as well. i figured if i jammed all my little tokens of inspiration in to one place, it'd not only help me control the chaos that is my studio, but also become an extremely useful tool in terms of reference and ideas. i'm tired of losing good ideas because i don't have a space to store them. my neurotic, obsessive mind isn't good for that. :)

i've also made a huge pile of old artwork that needs to be gotten rid of. it's mostly stuff from the early years of studying art and really, really bad. some i'll keep because it's always good to hold on to a few pieces from a different time in life (to laugh at, at least), but i've saved way too much old art and i simply don't have the space for it all. and, back to the ritualistic outlook of this cleaning spree, i don't want the past following me around quite so closely anymore.

i'm an entirely different person than i was 4 years ago when i first moved to the Bay Area. i mean, i still laugh at farts and tell off-color jokes and have a wardrobe dominated by the color black. i still have my romantic fixation with broken, rusted objects and used books and hand-made sweaters. i still talk people's ears off and stay up way too late and drink way too much caffeine. but i've also got a much deeper set of ethics than i had before moving here and going to CCA. i've got a much stronger sense of self, a clearer idea of right and wrong (as it applies to my own life, anyway), and a much more forgiving, patient, compassionate demeanor. i've grown up alot and i suppose i just feel like it's time to let this new person flourish, not crowd her with relics from the past. i even threw out some old journals! GASP! it just wasn't worth waking up old ghosts to find snippets of good writing. so... in the recycle bin they went and, hopefully, their next incarnation will be much brighter and happier than their life with me was during those years.

as for today, i am feeling great. i feel positive and capable and happy. inga (my dog) and i have still been pretty diligent about going for jogs and hikes. we never miss more than a day at a time and those missed days are becoming fewer and fewer. i feel healthy and strong again. life is good.

weeding...

for the past two days, i've been cleaning, sorting, and discarding things from my home... and i'm still nowhere near being finished. after quitting my day-job, i started really thinking about what kind of life i'm trying to build and i took a good, hard, honest look at myself and decided it was high time to take charge of my surroundings in a more personal, meaningful way.

there is definitely more than a small amount of truth to the cliche that the things you own begin owning you after awhile. there's no way around that fact. and it isn't necessarily something to feel bad about until you apply that truth to specifics. i have absolutely no problem with living a life ruled by books and art or even my collection of broken porcelain dolls, but i've got a big problem with letting my life be ruled by junk: the accumulation of rough years, tough times, and broken hearts...

until two days ago, my bookcase was overrun by more than just my massive collection of books. it was the home/storage unit for old nic-naks that i've been carrying around with me since i was 15 years old. i looked at them all, one by one, and realized that the majority of them were only with me because i didn't question their belonging with me. in other words, these things are with me because i didn't ask myself "do i even like this object anymore?", and overwhelmingly, when i did ask myself this question, the answer was a firm, unapologetic, cold NO. soon, the bookcase had been cleared of all my past baggage and i found myself weeding through my closet, tossing clothes all around the bedroom. i pulled out sweaters and dresses that i haven't actually worn in at least two years, holding on to them only because i think they're cool and that maybe i'll wear them again someday. this attitude needed to be scrapped along with the clutter.

soon, this project of weeding through became about much more than just creating space in my home, it became about an unpacking and unloading of the past. it became about finding my real self amid the chaos, clearing out the damage and trauma, and letting myself really become the new girl i need to be... the person i've become but can't see through all the objects and clutter and baggage. i am cleaning house in more ways than one and it feels wonderful. it feels amazing actually. getting to the point where i can let go of objects, realizing that they can have a better home elsewhere, or simply that i am no longer in need of whatever romantic, nostalgic fascination that brought the item in to my life is very freeing.

having grown up poor, it's always been very hard for me to get rid of things but the time has come to get over it, get over the past and move forward. the time has come to make choices based in ethics (like quitting the job) so that my outer life more closely resembles my inner life. i am matching things up and getting rid of the things that bog me down.

thoughts on paper...

humble, common, mundane - we all have a daily relationship with paper. we cringe at the junk mail we receive, we peel it back from sticks of gum, we turn page after page of magazines. we're used to it. it occupies a space in our daily lives that is so rampant, so huge, that we don't notice it. we take its presence for granted. and as far as art substrates go, it isn't hard to acquire.

there are plenty of artists in the world that draw on backs of envelopes or crumpled receipts. and these artists, for however much flack they take before gaining some sort of critical recognition, are doing something so fundamentally human that it flies well below the radar of ART and challenges our perceptions of what art is. the fact that a scribble on a stained napkin can be validated as a fine drawing is such a wonderful thing and i enjoy the big emotional response that type of art generates.

it is this extreme level of familiarity and banality that makes work on paper seem so much more intimate than work on canvas or linen or wood. i think using common, easily acquired materials is one of the big reasons why works on paper have become so important. there's even a magazine dedicated to it: art on paper. and the enormous volume Vitamin D is a testament to the importance of drawing itself... drawing for it's own sake and in it's own right, in no way connected to painting or planning.

drawing has been received as being something much more than a preliminary action, a way to jot down ideas or work out the kinks of a different piece. it stands on its own as a completely valid art form and i love that.

drawing is an action that we've all taken part in. we doodle when bored and scribble in the dirt. our coffee mugs leave little abstract drawings ringed across the kitchen table and we find animals hidden in cloud formations. we are all drawing all the time.

the commonality of drawing paired with the banal readiness of paper is largely responsible for why i've gravitated so strongly toward exploring its potentiality for making endearing, emotional, thoughtful, honest work. it's just so immediate and seems to showcase the passage of the human hand in a more observable,tangible way than oil on canvas. oil paintings always achieve a level of refinement but a drawing, no matter how refined, always seems to carry a quality of rawness (in my opinion, anyway) and a level of humility. i'm attracted to this occuance and need to explore it.

crawling along...

feeling a bit under the weather... i think all the excitement and drama of the past few days did me in. ugg. and i missed First Thursdays as a result. double ugg.

but i've finally collected 100 hearts at my shop! yay! it makes me feel so good and i really appreciate all the support and interest i've been receiving the last couple of months. it means the world to me.

last night, i stayed up painting until about 3 am and it felt wonderful, working slowly and patiently. it feels like i've been talking about these oil paintings forever and am still pretty far off from being able to offer proof of their existence. i swear, they're real! i'll eventually get these beasts tamed.

looky looky!

territories 12
15" x 11"
embroidery on paper
2009

this is what i've spent the last three days working on. lovely! i've been so taken with how much the hanging strings on these pieces resemble a girl's hair so i tried to exploit that resemblance further by braiding it. i love it! and i think it really starts to push certain metaphors to the forefront of the work: body as landscape, traditional expectations or ideals of the female, the longing for a white picket fence childhood or life, etc.


detail

i think i may add a pink or black bow to the end of the braid to really bump up the little girl associations that this piece presents.

i'm still working on the jumbo version of this and it is going to take me a long long time to get it finished. the size that the last three of these have been is 15" x 11" and it's at least a good 10 hours of stitching. the jumbo one is 4 times the size so, mathematically, it'll be a 40 hour work week to get it finished and that's only if i work on nothing else. yeah right. i like bouncing back and forth between works in progress, applying what i've learned with one piece to another, testing ideas, and just exploring the possibilities certain materials offer.

paper is so versatile that while i'm working on one piece i get so many ideas for future works that i've got to stop for a minute and write the ideas down so i don't forget them. i've lost a great many wonderful idea by assuming my mind can hold on to every whimsical thought that passes through while i'm working. and these pieces in particular are so meditative that i lose track of time and get lost in thought quite easily. that's something i've always loved about sewing and cross-stitch and crochet... all the traditional women's work that i get caught up in. i'm just so attracted to using the lineage of these activities in an art context to talk about identity, loss, longing, day-dreaming, hope. there's an inherent poetry in these traditions that i'm trying to bring to the surface and highlight. i think i'm on the right track with these territories...

but i'm also thinking of changing their names. yes, there are definitely part of the entire territories series i've been working on for the past year, but they have been such a turning point for me that i really think they need a title of their own... they are definitely different than the earlier work and don't have anything to with notions of the decorative like the others do. there's something so quiet and humble in these last three embroidery pieces that i want to honor it. they need to have their own title. i've just got to think one up. :)

strange but good...

well, the day started simply enough... woke up at 6am, sat around drinking coffee and writing in my notebook for an hour, hopped in the shower, got dressed, and headed off to work. after clocking in and reading the note that had been left for me (detailing a project that had been handed off to me in spite of declining the promotion i was offered last week that working on this project would have been a requirement of), i'd decided i'd had my fill of being completely railroaded by corporate management. shortly after being hired, i realized that my particular skill set was being exploited more often than not - meaning i was not hired to do the jobs i was doing and i wasn't being paid accordingly either. today, it reached a point of such utter ridiculousness that i faced a pretty daunting ethical dilemma: stay and willfully, knowingly allow myself to be exploited further or leave and forfeit the financial security i've enjoyed for the past several months. not a comfortable situation to find oneself in.

i decided to make a call to a person higher up the chain in the corporate structure and explain what has been going on since the time of my hire and that i had declined the promotion i was offered just to find myself scheduled to do that exact job. i knew to expect the typical corporate double-talk but i didn't expect to be insulted over and over again by this person.

the result was that i ended up calling this person out on their rude and misguided perceptions of who i am, that the company has acted unethically, and that my expectation at that point was to receive the fair financial compensation that follows the job function i was currently performing. logical, right? well, logic has no place in corporate greed as evidenced by the current economic crisis we find ourselves in.

though this person then began to apologize for the things they had said, i was nevertheless told that it's my responsibility to do what i'm told to do, without question, and that they will pay me whatever they feel like paying me. that was the wrong answer and i quit on the spot. i was honestly shocked that this person would rather let a worthwhile and competent employee walk out the door rather than pay a few bucks more an hour. stunned, angered, but also extremely relieved to be done with this.

a few days ago, i posted a blog about the benefits of being a worker-bee. i still believe that there is a benefit to answering to a boss, maintaining a schedule, and being in an environment where a person can hone the practice of humility... but i would never suggest that a person allow themselves to be used, taken advantage of, or exploited by anyone for any reason. i will not operate from a position of fear, and though the art business is a risky one, i'd rather work day and night to make ends meet than be forced to cow tow to an unethical, abusive entity. no thanks.

when i got home, there was an email waiting for me from white columns. i held my breath. some months ago, i had applied for inclusion in their curated artist registry and their response had finally arrived. i was more than nervous to open the email because last year i'd opened a rejection. well, not today friends! YAY!!!! i am so happy and thankful and, when i think about all the positive changes and opportunities that have come my way lately, i'm really starting to think that right now is the right time to really make the biggest push i can to get my work out in to the world. i am no stranger to struggle and i am eager to pay my dues because when it comes right down to it, art is the most important thing in the world... it is the best that we can offer each other and i am endlessly proud of the fact that i have been given the opportunity to take part in the discourse.

the day was a strange one, full of unexpected turns and difficult decisions, but also some equally unexpected recognition and reward.

there are honest people out there and i'm glad to search them out and eliminate those who are not from my life. i am glad to do what it takes to be honorable, respectable, and ethical. i have no regrets about what happened today - i came home, put on some coffee, and got right to work on the new embroidered territories piece. i've been working for 6 hours on it and am ready for 6 more.